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But there is yet another way to this knowledge:
Admiring the world of sense as we look out upon its vastness and
beauty and the order of its eternal march, thinking of the gods
within it, seen and hidden, and the celestial spirits and all the
life of animal and plant, let us mount to its archetype, to the
yet more authentic sphere: there we are to contemplate all things
as members of the Intellectual- eternal in their own right,
vested with a self-springing consciousness and life- and,
presiding over all these, the unsoiled Intelligence and the
unapproachable wisdom.
That archetypal world is the true Golden Age, age of Kronos, who
is the Intellectual-Principle as being the offspring or
exuberance of God. For here is contained all that is immortal:
nothing here but is Divine Mind; all is God; this is the place of
every soul. Here is rest unbroken: for how can that seek change,
in which all is well; what need that reach to, which holds all
within itself; what increase can that desire, which stands
utterly achieved? All its content, thus, is perfect, that itself
may be perfect throughout, as holding nothing that is less than
the divine, nothing that is less than intellective. Its knowing
is not by search but by possession, its blessedness inherent, not
acquired; for all belongs to it eternally and it holds the
authentic Eternity imitated by Time which, circling round the
Soul, makes towards the new thing and passes by the old. Soul
deals with thing after thing- now Socrates; now a horse: always
some one entity from among beings- but the Intellectual-Principle
is all and therefore its entire content is simultaneously present
in that identity: this is pure being in eternal actuality;
nowhere is there any future, for every then is a now; nor is
there any past, for nothing there has ever ceased to be;
everything has taken its stand for ever, an identity well
pleased, we might say, to be as it is; and everything, in that
entire content, is Intellectual-Principle and Authentic
Existence; and the total of all is Intellectual-Principle entire
and Being entire. Intellectual-Principle by its intellective act
establishes Being, which in turn, as the object of intellection,
becomes the cause of intellection and of existence to the
Intellectual-Principle- though, of course, there is another cause
of intellection which is also a cause to Being, both rising in a
source distinct from either.
Now while these two are coalescents, having their existence in
common, and are never apart, still the unity they form is
two-sided; there is Intellectual-Principle as against Being, the
intellectual agent as against the object of intellection; we
consider the intellective act and we have the
Intellectual-Principle; we think of the object of that act and we
have Being.
Such difference there must be if there is to be any intellection;
but similarly there must also be identity [since, in perfect
knowing, subject and object are identical.]
Thus the Primals [the first "Categories"] are seen to be:
Intellectual-Principle; Existence; Difference; Identity: we must
include also Motion and Rest: Motion provides for the
intellectual act, Rest preserves identity as Difference gives at
once a Knower and a Known, for, failing this, all is one, and
silent.
So too the objects of intellection [the ideal content of the
Divine Mind]- identical in virtue of the self-concentration of
the principle which is their common ground- must still be
distinct each from another; this distinction constitutes
Difference.
The Intellectual Kosmos thus a manifold, Number and Quantity
arise: Quality is the specific character of each of these ideas
which stand as the principles from which all else derives.
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